The Tragic Life of Franz Kafka

by Dulcie Langley

‘‘I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading it for? So that it will make us happy?...Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books…’’ Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka (3rd July, 1883 - 3rd June, 1924) is widely regarded as one of the greatest literary figures in recent history. His work can be characterised by its potent blend of the surreal and the real, exploring themes of guilt, existential anxiety, alienation and absurdity. Today, any piece which bears a resemblance to his uniquely unsettling style is referred to as ‘Kafkaesque’. To truly understand what prompted Kafka to craft these bizarre and disturbing fictional worlds, we must first gain an insight into the tragedy that was his life itself. 

Kafka was born in Prague, then part of Bohemia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to a German-speaking Jewish family. He was the oldest of six children, although his two brothers died before he turned seven years old. The remaining three sisters would all die in concentration camps during the Holocaust, but Kafka himself would not live for long enough to mourn their passings. 

Kafka’s father was an accomplished businessman, who by virtue of his sheer will and belligerent personality was able to rise above his working class background, marry a well-to-do woman and infiltrate higher middle class society. As fathers often do, Hermann Kafka hoped that his son would emulate the qualities that had garnered his success. Franz, a small, sickly boy riddled with anxiety, certainly did not match his expectations. 

Hermann Kafka was described as a volatile domestic tyrant, who directed his anger largely towards his son. With wicked tempers and a deep disdain for creative endeavours, he would become a defining figure in Kafka’s life and writing. Kafka suffered constant berating from his father for the duration of his life, and later attributed many of his personal struggles to this complex relationship. 

Ever the social climber, Hermann sent his son to ‘Altstädter Staatsgymnasium’, a prestigious high school for the academic elite. While Kafka performed well here, he felt consumed by the exacting standards and control. Following this miserable period, he enrolled at the Charles Ferdinand University of Prague. Kafka had chosen to study Chemistry, but buckled under the pressure from his father to transfer to Law after two weeks.  A law degree, Hermann believed, would be considered more impressive by his middle class friends. Kafka graduated in 1906, and took up an unpaid position as a clerk for the civil and criminal courts. It was during this time at university that he joined the ‘Lese und Redehalle der Deutschen Studenten’, a literature club for German speakers, where he would meet life-long friend Max Brod.

Desperately yearning to break free from his family and move abroad, in late 1907 Kafka joined an Italian insurance agency. His dreams of escape were quickly quashed however, and he found himself trapped in a tedious Prague office working an obscene number of hours. Still living with his father and scarcely finding time to write, Kafka’s mental health continued to rapidly deteriorate. 

After less than a year, he turned in his resignation. He then sought a new job with the Worker’s Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia, where he would remain for the rest of his working life. He could tolerate the schedule since it enabled writing to become part of his daily routine. If he went to sleep immediately when he finished work in the mid-afternoon, he could wake up and pursue his real passion for several hours in the night. 

It was in 1908 that Max Brod persuaded Kafka to publish his first stories. Although they sold poorly, the critical reaction was encouraging enough to convince him to keep writing. 

While Kafka was seen as a popular employee and good-humoured person, his perception of himself was informed mostly by the insults hurled at him by his father. Insecurities inculcated in the author in childhood impeded his ability to forge positive relationships throughout his life. This was particularly true of his relationships with women. 

Felice Bauer was one such example - a mutual friend of Brod’s wife, who Kafka met at a dinner party at the Brod family home in 1912. He was to become besotted with her, and began writing to her several times a day when she returned to Berlin. Though he corresponded with her frequently and at length, he often refused the invitation to meet her in person. Perhaps this is the central paradox which underpins Kafka’s existence; he asked to be left alone yet craved human contact, and asked for human contact yet craved being left alone. A turbulent couple, Kafka and Bauer had become engaged to be married twice before their final split in 1917. 

On 22nd September 1912, during the five year span of his relationship with Bauer, Kafka was compelled by a sudden spark of creativity to write in one sitting the short story ‘Das Urteil’, or ‘The Judgement’. For Kafka, this was the moment in which he metamorphosed from a man who did writing into an actual writer. The tale revolves around a young merchant and his relationship with his ageing father, and thus is regarded as the most autobiographical of Kafka's stories.

In that same year, he also began writing arguably the most well-known of all his books, ‘Die Verwandlung’, or ‘The Metamorphosis’. The opening sentence of ‘The Metamorphosis’ has earned its place as one of the most famous in the entirety of Western literature: 

‘‘Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheueren Ungeziefer verwandelt.’’

Or in English: 

‘‘As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.’’

Eventually published in 1915, the novella received critical acclaim for its poignant portrayal of the absurdity of life and the human condition. It conveys the complications of the relationship between Gregor and his family, between Gregor and his employers, and between the mind and body of Gregor himself. Today, ‘The Metamorphosis’ is crowned as the ‘quintessential’ Kafka tale. However, Kafka maintained that ‘The Judgement’ was the story he was proudest of, and it was this book that he dedicated ‘To Miss Felice Bauer’. 

In the August of 1917, Kafka was diagnosed with tuberculosis - a death sentence at this time.  Forced to leave his job at the insurance agency on account of his illness, he moved to the Bohemian village of Zürau to stay with his sister Ottla. His diagnosis however did not deter him from pursuing new relationships with women. After the breakdown of his engagement to Bauer, he became romantically involved with Julie Wohryzek, who he met in the Italian Tyrol, and Milena Jesenska, a Czech writer and translator. 

When Kafka announced his intention to marry Wohryzek, his father erupted with rage. For the next few months, Kafka endured fresh torrents of emotional abuse for what Hermann considered a short-sighted whirlwind decision. Although he initially attempted to stand his ground, a prevailing lack of self-esteem ultimately induced Kafka to cancel his engagement in November 1919. Shortly afterwards, he left Prague and checked into a guesthouse. Here, he sat down to compose a 45 page letter to his father, detailing all the issues that he had never dared to confront him about in person. In essence, it was Kafka’s own ‘Judgement’ - a scathing indictment of the behaviour he had been relentlessly subjected to, in which he expressed how he blamed Hermann for his social inabilities. He concluded his letter by indicating his hope that this honesty would lead to a better relationship. However, true to the manner in which Kafka’s life had been lived, ‘Brief an den Vater’ would never reach the addressee. 

In 1923, Kafka briefly moved to Berlin, aiming to fully direct his energy into his writing without the distraction of family. There he met Dora Diamant, a 25 year old kindergarten teacher who he subsequently established a connection with. The pair bonded over their shared Jewish background and belief in socialism, and soon became lovers. 

But such was Kafka’s worsening condition, Dora was more of a nurse than a lover. In early 1924, his health collapsed and he was instructed by his doctor to enter hospital. Kafka thus travelled to Vienna for treatment at a sanatorium, in one final attempt to combat his tuberculosis. 

Eventually Kafka lost his battle. He died in Kierling in Austria on 3rd June 1924.  Today, his remains can be found alongside those of his parents’, under a two-metre obelisk in Prague's New Jewish Cemetery in Olsanske. Indeed, even in death, Kafka could not free himself from the domineering presence of his father. 

Before his passing, Kakfa left a note for Brod to burn his remaining manuscripts. Fortunately for us, Brod did not adhere to his request. Instead, he spent the rest of 1924 sieving and sorting through Kafka’s many papers, organising them into coherent novels. In the following years, ‘Der Prozess’ (‘The Trial’), ‘Das Schloss’ (‘The Castle’) and ‘Amerika’ (also known as ‘The Man Who Disappeared’) were published. Kafka thus gained worldwide recognition, and has since developed a posthumous reputation as an icon of twentieth-century literature. While Hermann may still view his son as useless, history depicts him as one of the most significant writers on the global stage. 

One is left to contemplate how many other Kafkas have lived and died since his passing in 1924, whose manuscripts remain concealed in a drawer or were actually burned as a result of corroded confidence.  How many more authors were silenced by the judgement of callous family members or lovers? How many more remain undiscovered and unappreciated by the literary lens? And how, perhaps most crucially, could we ever find them?